Marc comes with highly regarded contact algorithms resulting in accurate and robust solutions of contact problems. It allows contact between solid-, shell- and beam-elements, and can also include rigid surfaces to make contact with deformable contact bodies.

For shell elements, contact can be occur on either the mid-plane or the outer faces by taking into account thickness and offset of the shell elements. 

For beam elements, contact takes the cross-sectional shape and offset into consideration with contact occurring on the outer and inner faces of the beam section. Contact on the inside of a beam allows modelling a beam inside a beam, an efficient way to model a sleeved-cable.

The following is an example showing contact between the different element types:

Marc can update the mesh during an analysis. This is useful in cases where either a finer mesh is required in a local region or when the elements become too distorted during an analysis.

The following examples mesh refinement in a local region and re-meshing to avoid excessive distortion:

Marc has multiple methods to calculate Stress Intensity or Energy Release Rate, two quantities used to predict crack propagation rate. Combined with Marc's Remeshing capability, it allows modelling crack growth to determine how the crack will grow as well as how quickly.

Additional methods are available to model a range of other crack-growth types of problems, including delamination of composite materials.

In addition to Structural Analysis, Marc can perform a range of additional analysis types. This includes Thermal-, Acoustic-, Electric- (i.e. Current), Electrostatic-, Magnetic- and Diffusion-Analysis.

Multi-Physics refers to analysis that combines more than one analysis type. This can be done either in a single solver or by combining software. Many of Marc's analysis types can be combined in a single analysis - Examples include Thermal + Structural, Thermal + Structural + Electrical, Magnetic + Thermal + Structural, Structural + Acoustic.

In addition, Marc can couple with external solvers to model physics that is not inherent to Marc's capabilities. The most common external solvers are CFD solvers such as scFlow to model fluid-structure interaction, Rigid-Body-Dynamics software like Adams to model one or more nonlinear components in a mechanical system or with Micro-Mechanical software like Digimat that can model the microscopic material behavior of Composites for accurate prediction of composite behavior and failure progression.

The following shows some examples of Multi-Physics models solved with Marc or with Marc coupled to an external solver: